


Camellia in Bloom

by LilacBellfrog



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Established Relationship, Implied Sexual Content, Introspection, KakaIru Mini Bang 2020, M/M, Morning After, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, mentions of minor character death, referenced Kotetsu/Izumo and Asuma/Kurenai
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-08
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:47:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24607213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LilacBellfrog/pseuds/LilacBellfrog
Summary: That Kakashi had gotten a soulmark last nightat allhad been shocking in its own right for the both of them.As Iruka slid a pair of undershorts onto his hips, he let his eyes zero in on the center of his upturned, calloused palm. His life line, heart line, and every scar in between branched outward, crossing in aimless intersections as though forming a map of Konoha itself. And yet, despite the intricacies that time had sewn into its skin, his palm remained wholly,mundanelyunmarked.It hadn’t bothered him much before last night. But, then, neither had the once-unoccupied sheets on the other side of the mattress.
Relationships: Hatake Kakashi/Umino Iruka
Comments: 23
Kudos: 165
Collections: KakaIru Mini Bang 2020





	Camellia in Bloom

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [KakaIru Mini Bang 2020](https://kakairu-mini-bang.tumblr.com/) event. Please go check out other works in the collection, both art and written works, as they're published!

“ _Nothing._ ”

Iruka snatched up the nearest towel with a sigh.

It wasn’t _entirely_ unheard of, he told himself, for a person to get their soulmark at a different point in time than their soulmate. After all, if Kotetsu could be believed after a few shots of cheap sake, Izumo’s mark hadn’t appeared until several _years_ after his own. But then, something like that wasn’t exactly commonplace _,_ either, and those two had always been a little strange to begin with.

Frowning, he gnawed at the inside of his cheek in thought.

That Kakashi had gotten such a soulmark last night _at all_ had been shocking in its own right for the both of them. Their relationship had always been marked by an intentionally slow progression, something cautious and careful at first as they both adjusted to the implications of being involved with another person after so many years alone. Yet, as the months passed them by, they found themselves falling into a pleasant, if somewhat accidental, romance with one another, and the previous night found their fleeting contact and wary confessions at last giving way to eager lips and touch-starved hands.

Still, neither of them had prepared for even the _possibility_ of finding a soulmate in the other—not at first, at least, and not in any way Kakashi had ever verbalized to _him_.

After nearly a year of whatever-this-was between them, the fluttery twist in Iruka’s chest had metamorphosed into something that could only be described as _comfortably vulnerable_. Though unspoken, the offhanded thought that they might find their marks with one another had crossed his mind by that point. But there was no reason that feeling couldn’t have come as a natural progression of their relationship without there being an otherworldly connection between them. Cases of deep love between non-soulmates were common enough, as Asuma and Kurenai could attest to, and platonic soulmates weren’t entirely unheard of either. Outside of thinking through the implications if it _did_ appear, their being potential soulmates had never given him much pause.

As he slid a pair of undershorts onto his hips, he let his eyes zero in on the center of his upturned, calloused palm. His life line, heart line, and every scar in between branched outward, crossing in aimless intersections as though forming a map of Konoha itself. And yet, despite the intricacies that time had sewn into its skin, his palm remained wholly, _mundanely_ unmarked.

It hadn’t bothered him much before last night. But, then, neither had the once-unoccupied sheets on the other side of the mattress.

Humming in thought, Iruka lowered himself onto the wooden stool in front of the bathroom mirror. The muscles in his lower body ached in protest at the motion, and memories of the previous night’s endeavors pooled up into his mind. For the months they had spent dancing around their affections for one another, they had never before shared the night together, and certainly not like _that_. As such, it was an almost pleasant soreness, a feeling all but forgotten after so many years on his own. He might think otherwise after the afterglow subsided, but as he wrung the excess water from his hair, he took the remnant ache in his limbs with a personal sense of satisfaction.

He set the rag aside with a roll of his shoulders, and as the fabric fell from his fingertips, he let his gaze settle at last on his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

“Wh—!” Catching himself, he raised a hand to cover his mouth and hoped that he hadn’t woken the man in the adjacent room. Instead, he swallowed thickly and dragged sleep-heavy eyes back up to the smattering of love-bites and scratches that littered the tops of his shoulders. He knew the jounin had a tendency to get carried away in most things, but he never expected anything quite like this.

Granted, Kakashi had only marked him up so much because Iruka outright _encouraged_ the sensation of nails and teeth against his skin in the heat of the moment. In a sense, Kakashi’s eager response to his insistence was a sweet gesture, he supposed. 

But, if he was being frank with himself, he could probably stand to be a little _less_ encouraging in bed, if this was the result.

He dragged his hand down his face with a sigh.

Even if nobody else was likely to see the bruises beneath his everyday uniform, it didn’t make _knowing_ they were there any less troublesome for his mindstate. Kakashi’s soulmark showing on such a visible place as his hand was already going to publicize their relationship sooner than later; he would rather not disclose that information before discussing with Kakashi first, and the last way he wanted to go public was via a bunch of pre-genin telling their parents about the strange bruises on their teacher's shoulders.

Focusing his attention elsewhere, he flickered his eyes down to the inside of his non-dominant palm, and then to the exposed skin on his forearm. Though rare, a person’s soulmark could also appear in the same place as their parents’, and from what fragments of memory he still had of his mother, the large blue-and-red jay that had been permanently fixed onto her right arm stuck out clearly in his mind.

The thought brought a hand up to dance fingertips across the discolored line on his nose. He smiled despite himself, falling softly back into a fond memory of his mother as she discovered him etching such a bird into kitchen cabinets with the blunt end of a kunai. He could still hear her fretful scolding like bittered honey in his ears, though time had muddied the true sound of her voice to something more familiar, more _recent_ , a tone that fell somewhere between Anko and Tsunade whenever they berated him.

Despite her chastising, she had soon handed the kunai back to him and folded his fingers around the handle properly, as though she knew fully well he would find another in due time—be it in his parents’ supply the following day, or in battle as a shinobi years later. He liked to imagine her making an offhand remark soon thereafter and prodding at the scar on his nose—saying that if he wasn’t careful, he would end up with another mark just like it. Then, as she had done countless times before, she would take his face and cup it in her palms. The pads of her thumb would swipe along the edge of the scar on one side, as though her touch could quell any of the lingering pain it had brought his toddler self when fresh—as though she could protect him from any further scars, and he would believe her wholeheartedly.

In hindsight, he wondered if the gesture hadn't been done for her own peace of mind as much as his own. Still, she would continue to stroke the line that bisected his face a few times before ruffling his hair and promising to teach him a few simple kunai maneuvers once he was tall enough to reach the kitchen sink.

Whether that last part was imaginary or some fragment of memory, he wasn’t certain. But he liked to think that it made no difference either way.  


In his genin years, he had also been told that the scar added interest to his otherwise homely face—but then again, he told himself with a snort, the only one who had ever put it quite so _bluntly_ had been a younger Mizuki.

All the same, it was no secret that it wasn’t as nice to look at as a soulmark might be, but the memories it held were fleeting and precious all the same. Nothing else really mattered.

Perhaps that was the reason why he was suddenly so impatient for his soulmark to appear—some subconscious desire to bear a gateway to his time with Kakashi. It was no secret how dangerous the life of a shinobi could be, and jounin were far from an exception to that fact. Having labored over the intimate (if messy) details of Kakashi’s reports, Iruka had become all too familiar with the perils the copy-nin faced every time he went on a standard mission—let alone the S-ranks that Iruka was far less privy to. In the event of a worst-case scenario being realized, his soulmark would serve as a staunch reminder. Just as some of his deeper scars would never completely fade, so too would a soulmark be with him for life.

But, he supposed, that permanence also carried with it a daunting burden.

The pads of his fingers drew a line down his cheek, hovering in place over a spot just beneath his jaw. In that divet was a scar otherwise unseen, visible only beneath the brightest rays of summer sunlight. And yet, the memories it held struck him more vividly than any others he kept from his childhood—horrid scenes of a family severed, visions of blight imperceptible behind a blur of tears and sweat. Foreign arms had held him tightly, _painfully_ , in a restraint far removed from the comfort of a parent’s embrace. And then, he had been hauled away.

As he sat here these endless years later, eyeing his half-nude form in the mirror, he could still feel the ghost of hands dragging him back—the sensation of stale tears prickling the corners of younger eyes as he watched his parents get swallowed up in a shroud of smokey gray. There was nothing he could have done to save them. And yet, if he had known how that day was going to play out, he might have better committed to memory his father’s hands atop his shoulders before school, or his mother’s hair tickling his face when he looped his arms around her neck.

It wasn’t as though their sacrifices had been beyond him entirely, even in adolescence; they were shinobi, after all, and their allegiance to protecting the people of their village outweighed all else. He had come to terms with it in time, as well as anyone with suddenly-lost loved ones could _._

Still, the weight of their sacrifice had been a difficult truth to accept in the wake of their passing, and though he eventually shed the naiveties of his youth, he hadn’t gained a _true_ empathy for the conflict they must have felt as their fading eyes watched their son get pulled to safety.

That understanding wouldn't reach him in full until many years later, when he found himself hunched and sobbing over Naruto with a fuuma shuriken lodged in his back.

A shiver rolled along his nerves at the thought, and he reached a hand behind him to knead at the roughened skin that remained from the injury. For all of the physical ailments he had endured in his time as a chunin, the pain wrought by a cold projectile burying deep into the sinew of his back far exceeded them all.

And yet, at the time, that Mizuki had meant it to be a fatal shot for a _child_ had far edged out the pain and regret he’d felt—and _oh_ , if only the absolute _bastard_ could see Naruto now.

As it was, he later learned that the shuriken had missed his spinal cord by mere centimeters. Had he been a less fortunate man, he might have lost far more than a bit of blood and, in hindsight, an incredibly manipulative former friend that day. 

But for Naruto—for his students and for his village—he would take ten more fuuma straight to the heart.

The sudden sound of rustling sheets trickled through the gap beneath the doorway, and all of his errant thoughts gave way to something far softer. He figured Kakashi would be up soon. Were his lover any other man, Iruka might have been concerned about hearing him stir at dawnbreak like this. But he had come to know Kakashi for the light sleeper that he was; he’d lost count of the times the jounin had crashed, chakra-deprived, on his sofa, rather than enduring one more night at the hospital. It was wishful thinking to hope he didn’t wake him in his morning routine.

Letting another tired shudder twitch across his shoulders, he sectioned off a portion of hair to comb. It likely wouldn’t be long before the copy-nin trudged through the door, came over to his side, and heckled him in whatever sleep-dazed way he saw fit in the moment. Perhaps what they had was odd, by more traditional standards—then again, he didn’t think of Kakashi as particularly traditional in _most_ senses, he supposed—but he’d be lying if he said this wasn’t the best relationship he had ever been involved in.

And if he’d had any doubts before, the red camellia that had blossomed in Kakashi’s palm the previous night had quelled them all.

A concerned look had crossed Kakashi’s face as they studied the mark mid-coital, as though the knowledge that he and Iruka shared something so ethereal made this strange relationship of theirs just the littlest bit _realer_. And yet, as Iruka had taken his hand and kissed the freshly marred skin on his palm, Kakashi’s reservations seemed to all but melt away.

The rest of the evening had been spent in bed together, perhaps for a bit too long if his aching body was any indicator. It had been exceedingly slow, a touch clumsy, and rife with a disbelieving sort of laughter as they brought each other to terms with it all. 

It had been, in its own unique way, imperfectly _perfect_.

As though beckoned inside by Iruka’s sleep-scattered thoughts, Kakashi’s head poked itself through the doorway at last. A single dark eye peered across the room at him with a tired curiosity; the other remained comfortably hidden beneath a sleeping eyepatch. “... ‘ruka?”

Iruka’s heart swelled at the sleepy sound of his name on Kakashi’s tongue, and he returned the stare with a wide, toothy smile. “Good morning.”

“You’re never up this early.”

Kakashi slid the door more fully open, exposing the loose pair of pants that now hung awkwardly around his hips. And yet, his torso remained _delectably_ bare, which only made the evidence of their evening painted across his ribs all the more alluring. Despite his more base interests, Iruka politely kept his eyes upward.

“It’s a school day,” he said with a shrug, and dragged the comb through his hair once more. “Did you want to wash up?”

“In a minute.” Kakashi smiled mildly at him in return, a rare expression that never failed to make Iruka’s pulse flicker in his veins. Even in their more recent closeness, he had only borne witness to the lower half of the other man’s face when behind closed doors; thus, when the opportunity arose, he drank in every possible centimeter of Kakashi’s expressive mouth that he could manage.

From across the room, Iruka caught a dark eye flitting up and down his body a few times and cleared his throat. He continued to thread the comb through the ends of his hair as he cast a cheeky look towards his lover. “Hey, I’m still a little sore from last night. Don’t get your hopes up.”

Kakashi lifted his eye back up to Iruka's face, and though the smile on his lips faltered slightly, there was a hint of sleepy mischief still playing at either corner. He rubbed at his neck a few times. “Sorry about that.”

Iruka took a different section of hair between his fingers and shifted a bit in his seat. When he spoke again, his voice grew quiet, as though he didn’t trust his tongue not to betray his combatant thoughts and emotions over the evening’s larger revelation. “No need to be sorry. It was… good. _Really_ good.”

“... Ah.”

He swallowed before continuing. “I hope it was for you too. I didn’t mean to fall asleep so quickly last night.”

“You worked thirteen hours yesterday.” Kakashi regarded his face a moment longer. “And it was.”

The heat in his cheeks only heightened at Kakashi’s sincerity. He let his face slip into a crooked smile again, and his eyes shifted once more to the purplish blooms that kissed the ridge of his shoulder in the mirror. “I’m glad. I was worried I finished before you did and just... passed out.”

Kakashi crossed the threshold into the bathroom, and as Iruka placed the comb on the countertop, a familiar pair of hands settled on either of his shoulders. He stiffened at the chilly sensation, but otherwise let the tension slowly trickle from his body beneath his companion’s touch. For as cold as his hands always were, there was a comfort in them unlike any Iruka had felt in _years_ ; still, it always took him a few moments to adjust to the stark temperature difference between their bodies.

“You did. But I wasn’t far behind.” Kakashi’s voice drew quieter, and as he spoke again, he let the side of his soulmarked thumb stroke circles against a larger bruise. He squeezed his fingers once into Iruka’s shoulders for emphasis. “And that doesn’t change my mind.”

“Oh.” Considering how much the soulmark discovery had heightened their enthusiasm, that didn’t surprise Iruka as much as he might have thought. All the same, he grimaced. “Wake me up next time?”

“I can’t promise that.”

“Kakashi…”

“ _Irukaaa._ ”

Iruka eyed him with a deepening frown. “Of all the things to be so _stubborn_ about…”

“Only for you.”

“I’m _flattered_.”

Studying his reflection for a moment, Kakashi lowered his chin to nestle against the part in Iruka’s damp hair. His palms slid down from Iruka’s shoulders to instead loop loose arms around either side of his neck from behind. “Will you come here again tonight?”

Iruka softened at that, and slowly eased himself back against the upper half of Kakashi’s chest. He curled the tips of his fingers into the red flower on his lover's palm and kneaded the calloused skin a few times in thought. “You have a mission tomorrow, right?”

Kakashi didn’t respond immediately, but the downward flicker of his gaze spoke all that he needed to.

“Then this is _exactly_ where I want to be. I’ll bring takeout.” He paused, and scrunched his eyebrows in thought for a moment. “Ah, wait, today’s Wednesday. In that case, I hope you don’t mind me bringing a few stacks of papers to grade tonight.”

Kakashi made a noise in the back of his throat. “None of those pre-genin would mind if you took an extra day to grade their reports.”

“Not happening,” he said matter-of-factly, and reached up to prod him lightly on the nose. “I’m behind on grading as it is this week.”

“Fine, fine.” Kakashi dipped his face a little further into Iruka’s scalp and let his visible eye slip shut. The nose buried in Iruka’s hair breathed in and out deliberately, as though basking in the scent of his own shampoo in the chunin’s hair. “... I could help you grade.”

“I’ve seen your mission reports. That’s _also_ not happening.” All the same, he lifted Kakashi’s hand to his lips for a kiss, and as he let it slide back downward, he craned his neck back to look upside-down at him for a moment. “But, um… if it wouldn’t be too boring for you, I’d be happy to spend the evening next to you while I grade.”

Adjusting his chin a bit, Kakashi lowered his face further and pressed a lazy, lingering kiss to Iruka’s brow in return. “Boring… Hm. Watching you react to bad reports is _never_ boring.”

Iruka shot him another flat look, but otherwise slumped a bit more comfortably against the solid body behind him. “They’re _children_. What’s your excuse?”

“... You’re my excuse?”

“I've seen you hand those off to _other people_ , too _._ ”

Kakashi offered him a tone that feigned offense. “But when I give them to you, it’s out of love.”

“Heh,” Iruka chuckled drily and cracked a smile, in spite of himself. “In that case, as your _soulmate_ , nothing lets me show my love for _you_ quite like making you redo them.”

Despite his half-hearted bickering, Kakashi leaned forward into Iruka’s shoulders, as though absorbing whatever heat he could from Iruka’s naturally warmer body. “That’s not the same at all.” 

With a contented hum, Iruka lowered his head back down and rested his gaze on Kakashi’s form in the mirror again—lithe, attractive, but not without its own etchings of a life fraught with pain. In their evening together, Iruka had committed the wider breadth of his marks to memory, from the faint scars on his chest to a more recent kunai stab-mark on his ankle, right down to the ANBU tattoo on his forearm. But as familiar as his body would eventually become beneath tongue and touch, its traumas were buried far deeper than he could reach on his own. If Kakashi ever wanted to share with him, he would listen with intent eyes and, if permitted, a soothing hand rubbing circles into his back.

Otherwise, he knew better than to wonder; it was no mystery that Kakashi’s scars told a far sadder story than his own. 

As the notion bubbled up to his mind, he gave the hands beneath his own a gentle squeeze. The soulmarked palm pulsated a few times, and a comfortable warmth billowed out against his hand in contrast to Kakashi’s usual temperature. He had always heard that a soulmark could serve as a soothing hearth for the bonded soul or souls, but the warmth it emanated was lulling him beyond anything he could have imagined, just as it had done the night before.

The edge of Iruka’s fingernail traced the outer curve of a petal, and a soothing pulse of chakra skittered along his nerves again. Even without a mark of his own yet, he hoped that whatever gestures he could make against Kakashi’s mark would provide a calming buzz to the other man in return.

For all of the gratitude he felt, it was the very least that he could offer right now. 

“Iruka?”

The quiet murmur of his name drew his attention back to Kakashi, whose lips and nose had been otherwise occupied by nuzzling sleepy affections into his scalp. With each motion of the jounin's face, his hair began to bunch up wildly at the top of his head, sticking up in haphazard directions to render his earlier combing efforts useless. A part of him almost thought he was doing this intentionally, and for all of the nonsense that Kakashi had put him through over the years, this one felt _particularly_ deliberate. Lovable _asshole_.

“Kakashi, knock it off.”

He stilled his face, but otherwise met Iruka’s eyes with the same unreadable expression. “I know that look."

At that, Iruka ducked his head a bit. "What look?"

"I can hear you thinking from here." Kakashi let out a long yawn before continuing. "If you want to talk, I’ll listen.”

Eyeing him for a moment longer, Iruka rubbed at his nose scar in hesitation. He had known since the soulmark appeared on Kakashi’s skin last night that they would need to have this conversation at some point, but he hadn’t been awake enough to prepare for it in advance. “My soulmark...”

Kakashi’s visible brow rose. “Did you find it?”

“Nothing.” He sighed, and let his eyelids slip shut for a moment. “Trust me, if I did, I’d have you touch it immediately.”

“Kinky.”

“Not like _that_.” He pressed a finger onto the ruby-red bloom. “Do you feel that? Does that feel any different than when I touch your other hand?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.” His voice quieted. “It’s hard to explain in words, but it’s _warm_. It’s like... when I touch it, I feel _protected_. I know it sounds crazy, but it’s one of the best things I’ve ever felt... I wish you could feel the same thing.”

Kakashi studied him before flexing his fingers. “At the risk of sounding sappy, I already do.”

That made Iruka tense, and so he moved to knead the soulmark with the palm of his hand as he pieced the rest of his uncertain thoughts together. “Kakashi… Can I ask you something?”

“Hmm?”

“I know we’ve taken things slow until now,” he continued. “But that soulmark made up our minds about a few things. Your soulmark’s on your hand—who _knows_ where mine will be—and both Leaf-nin and enemy-nin are going to see it eventually. I need to know if you care. About being public."

He continued, “I know there’s some risk; we’re both shinobi. But I love you. You know that. _I_ know that. Even if it took us both _way_ too long to figure that out.” He chuckled lightly and shook his head at himself. Hadn’t _that_ been an interesting realization to have over a dinner together at Ichiraku; Ayame was never going to let him live it down. “And this feels like as good a time as any, if that’s something that you want, too.”

Kakashi, though questioning in his gaze, waited patiently for Iruka to complete his thoughts.

“But it’s a decision that I want us to make together.”

Kakashi rubbed the pad of his thumb against Iruka’s hand a few times in thought. Once he was sure Iruka was finished, he spoke. “So that’s what it is.”

Mulling over his words, Kakashi unlooped his arms from around Iruka’s neck and straightened his back. After wiping his midsection clean, he took a few steps away and instead propped himself up onto the bathroom counter. They sat like that in silence for a moment, neither sorted entirely through their thoughts enough to bring them to spoken word. When Iruka reached out for his comb again, Kakashi broke the quiet air between them. “I’ve never pictured myself with a soulmark.”

Iruka stilled his arm and blinked up at him a few times. “What do you mean?”

He sat his elbow on top of his knee with a shrug. “I never thought the opportunity would come up. I was _surprised_ when it happened last night, to say the least.”

That struck Iruka as a surprise. He knew Kakashi hadn’t had much in the way of romantic or sexual partners before him. But, even so, it wasn’t as though platonic soulmates were unheard of either, and Kakashi wasn’t completely lacking a circle of familiars, between Gai and Tenzou and his other jounin acquaintances. 

A part of him wanted to ask, but he held his tongue and let him continue.

“I’ve never thought it was that important. Even now, I _still_ don’t care about the mark itself much. It just means that I’ll have to wear gloves when I leave town.” He paused, averting his eye to gaze down at the red blossom in the center of his palm. His cheeks began to burn pink. “But despite that, I guess… you wouldn’t believe how _glad_ I am that it’s _you_.”

That brought Iruka’s eyes darting back up, searching Kakashi’s unreadable expression for any inkling of what all was going through his head. It wasn’t as if Kakashi hadn’t expressed his appreciation for Iruka in the past—though he did have a tendency to show his affections more through actions and, at times, poorly-constructed flirtations straight off of the pages of Icha Icha. But something in this particular confession, whether it was the luster still clinging to them both or something else entirely, made his heart quiver in his chest, just as it had in their first confession all those months ago.

Whether his mark appeared tomorrow or five years from now, that feeling would be hard-pressed to leave him so easily. That Kakashi could so openly admit the happiness that Iruka brought him, mark or no mark, was a fluttery sort of feeling that he was certain would hold in his memories for a lifetime.

“For what it’s worth, I think most of Konoha already knows about us anyway… save Naruto, at least.” Kakashi sighed, though Iruka didn’t miss the exasperated fondness in the undercurrent of his voice. “Gai has been going on about the ‘youthful passions of our love’ for some time.”

Knowing Gai, Iruka didn’t doubt that was true. Anko had weaseled the truth out of him back when it all started, as well, so he had always assumed it would be a matter of time before word spread.

“So if _you’re_ sure about this,” Kakashi said, “and about the risks involved, then I am too. But really think about it.”

“… Thank you.” He finally managed to speak, though found himself unable to settle down the warmth in his face. “I’ve thought about it more than I’d like to admit. And I’m willing, as long as you are, too.”

“I am.” A sly glint rose to Kakashi’s eye. “Ah, though, this means you’re my new excuse for being late.”

Iruka scoffed at him. “Not a chance. Unless I’m _actually_ your excuse for being late.” He knocked his knee against Kakashi’s leg with an implicative smirk. “But… I mean it. Thank you. Though, next time you quote Icha Icha at me, can you pick something less _corny_?”

“Icha Icha?” Kakashi clicked his tongue. “You’re mistaken. Our love—”

“ _Violence_. Chapter Seven, right? It took me a minute, but I thought I’d heard that “ _I’m so glad it’s you_ ” line somewhere before.”

For a brief second, Kakashi’s eye widened in surprise, and that look alone Iruka wanted to commit to memory forever. He’d figured some cursory knowledge of the books may come in handy someday—though these circumstances weren’t exactly what he had in mind.

The shocked expression on Kakashi’s face soon twisted into a wide grin, and a warm chuckle slipped out from deep within his chest. “Umino Iruka, a man after my own heart.”

As Iruka rose from the seat, Kakashi reached both arms up to cup Iruka’s face and gently coax it downward. The thumb of his soulmarked hand ghosted across the edge of the nose scar, an affectionate gesture that, for a moment’s breath, brought Iruka’s thoughts back to his mother.

“But it is true. I’m glad it’s you.”

Finally, Iruka leaned down to give him a proper kiss, humming his affections against the tired smile that pressed right back into his own. With each breath that flitted between their mouths, the hand against his face buzzed with more of that sweet warmth, and his smile blew ever-wider in a swell of absolute _mirth_. Unable to help himself, he broke off to rest his cheek against the other’s as a fit of laughter welled up from some unidentifiable place in his body. And as their scars dusted against one another in a perfect intersection, he finally understood those stories he had always heard as a child—it wasn’t that they were incomplete before each other, far from it, but now the wholenesses of their lives, their joy and their strife, would be something they endured together.

The notion was somehow overwhelming and exquisite, all at once.

Perhaps there was some truth to what Kakashi had said, after all. He didn’t have a permanent signifier of his soulmate on his body, but maybe that didn’t matter so much; they could make up for it in actions far more important than a few petals on his skin. In their time together, regardless of how long it may be, he would commit as much of Kakashi to memory as he could. 

And as the jounin tested a longer, lingering kiss beneath his jaw, Iruka’s thoughts drifted back to the matter at hand. 

“Hey, hey.” He lightly batted away Kakashi’s searching lips. “I need to get ready.”

Lowering his voice to a careful murmur, Iruka traced the tip of his finger down the length of Kakashi’s nose. “But we can pick this back up later, if you’re up for it. _After_ grading. And no distracting me this time, or it’s going to take _longer_.”

“I make no promises.”

With one final peck, Iruka stepped back and turned towards the door. But as he began to move away, he found the jounin’s fingers suddenly looped around his wrist. 

“Iruka?"

The urgency in Kakashi’s tone gave him pause, and so Iruka glanced back over his shoulder at him. “What is it?”

“... You might want to look at your back.”

Iruka let his stare linger on him a bit longer, and as he searched his lover's expression for any modicum of casual humor, his mouth began to dry. “You’re... not talking about my scar, are you.”

It wasn’t meant as a question; he already knew the answer. Doing as he was told, he craned his neck back to look at his reflection.

And just below his shoulder blades, sitting beautifully beneath the shuriken scar, was a fresh scarlet camellia.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written soulmate fic or KakaIru much before this, so this was a fun challenge for me! The fic had a bit of a "mind of its own". I hope y'all enjoyed!
> 
> Kudos, comments, and bookmarks are all welcome and appreciated!
> 
> You can also track me down on tumblr at [lilac-bellfrog](https://lilac-bellfrog.tumblr.com/).


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